Am I one of the 1%?

I have been with PN for six years plus. Always very happy with them. Good service, good value for money. I went broadband 18 months ago. All seemed well. (Now on 1Mb)

Having a faster service meant I began to explore P2P and began to try the binary newsgroups. That is what one does when one has a faster service. Now I average 20-30G per month, probably half and half peak and off peak. I use SHAREZZA and F.agent and Grabbit. I web surf (ebay, BBC, CCN etc), I run a blog (
ccgi.andre02.plus.com/wordpress/) and photo gallery (small scale stuff) and I play half life 2 (which my wife disapproves of as I am a 40 year old man!)

So does this make me the 1%? Can someone from CS tell me if I am one their list of evil users. Simply because, whther I am or not, I feel like it. Usenet speeds 20-80Kbs and highly variable. P2P lucky to get 20Kbs in the day and maybe 40Kbs overnight.

I know that P2P can be hit or miss, being dependant on number of file shares etc but even on a file which has 200 plus sources it now takes days to download. In fact I have in my Sharezza queue files still downloading for over a month. I have tried bittorrent but just gave up.

Within a short time, if I am to believe the hype, I will be able to download TV shows from the BBC archive and order films, directly streamed to my HD ready TV. SKy TV will be broadcasting via their new broadband boxes and all my telephone calls will be VOIP.

If I am also to believe rightly PN plan to be on the crest of this exciting wave. Fair enough and I would be happy to still be a customer with them if that happens except.....

So the BBC open their archives and I want to download all episodes of Men behaving badly. Oh dear, very rapidly overwhelm my fair usage. Overwhelm their system and more throttling -this time on http.

If PN can't cope with P2P and Usenet now, what chance to do they have with TV etc.

Usenet is one of the oldest and most popular sections of the internet. It is not a niche market and does not deserve the treatment it gets. So there are dodgy binaries available but when broadband TV starts (ina few short years) I guarentee there will be dodgy content there as well. (Take a look at WinampTV)

P2P is recognised as a valuable means of distributing files and the movie companies are beginning to recognise that they can use it to their advantage. No doubt soon there will be commercial p2P networks delivering legal content.

Sadly I am seriously shopping around though hugely reluctant to leave. if I can find a company that offers usenet and P2P uncapped or capped say 50G per month I would be happy. No throtting and at same price. Anyone recommend one such company.

Finally I demand that someone from CS tells me if I am one of those 1%.

Am I one of the 1%?

But you are one of the people who see the downside in what is being introduced.
I was not interested in a protocol/service speed specific download.
Like many, I dont download a lot but I want it at the speeds I subscribed to not whatever they deem it appropriate to deliver it at.
Those people who use a range of broadband services (other than simple browsing and email) then this service no longer delivers.
At less than 5gb a month am I the 1% you wanted to get rid of?

Am I one of the 1%?

No, absolutely not. We want to continue to win your business and we know we can only do that by giving you a good service for a good price. We've let a small percentage of customers use an unsustainable amount which has affected everyone else's experience. We're fixing that now and as a result some heavy users are moving to other ISPs who can better accomodate their downloading needs.

Anyone who downloads a few albums, the odd DVD, streams some radio, has a website, shares photos, browses the web and uses email and webcams (i.e. normal usage) has absolutely nothing to worry about.

Anyone who consistently downloads huge amounts (e.g. 100GB per month or more) all day long is not sustainable at the prices we charge, and would be better off finding another ISP.

If we try and design a product that caters for 100% of people, in reality it only meets the top 1% requirements and 99% of people end up paying too much to subsidise the heavy users. We've made it clear that we don't want that to happen.

We are working on some systems that will speed up downloads for the vast majority of customers. I.e. as you download more and more things gradually slow down, but your first X GB per month is lightning fast. The tools we have available at the moment are a little blunt but they will get better which will mean your experience gets faster if you are a light or medium user.

We have a meeting with the PlusNet Usergroup later this month where we'll be taking them through our ideas for the future. We'll design things taking on board customer feedback to make sure that we design products and services that meet your requirements.

I've said it before and will say it again. We don't spend millions on advertising and we're not going to. Therefore if we give rubbish service, all our customers will go elsewhere and the business will go bust. We know some of you are experiencing slow speeds at the moment and we're working very hard to resolve that.

It's easy to read these forums or ADSLguide and think we're losing customers at a frightening rate, but it simply isn't the case. The % of customers leaving us each month hasn't increased in 6 months and is well below the industry average.

We want to keep 99% of people delighted - but that means we can't necessarily meet the needs of 1%.

Am I one of the 1%?

It's easy to read these forums or ADSLguide and think we're losing customers at a frightening rate, but it simply isn't the case. The % of customers leaving us each month hasn't increased in 6 months and is well below the industry average.

We want to keep 99% of people delighted - but that means we can't necessarily meet the needs of 1%.

What is the point in stating that you've not seen a sharp increase in people jumping ship over the last 6 months? The biggest change to affect the naughty 1% has only just been implemented.

Report to us again what effect this has had on your user numbers in 2 months time.

Am I one of the 1%?

... Like many, I dont download a lot but I want it at the speeds I subscribed to not whatever they deem it appropriate to deliver it at. ...

That's a key issue here - 'the speeds you subscribed to'.

A competing ISP broadband service features the question, 'What Is Broadband?'. The answer includes:

Quote

1. Always on, always available

ADSL broadband splits your existing phone line so you can make and take calls as normal - no more engaged tones for your friends and family.

When you’re switched on, you’re always online, with virtually instant access to any information or service.

2. High speed access, high speed downloads

End the world wide wait - with downloads at up to 40 times the speed of a standard phone and modem, surfing the net actually becomes fun.

Download music faster than you can play it. Discovering and downloading animations, graphics, video, movie, news and sports clips is quick and easy.

Remember when always on, high speed access and downloads were things we signed up for?

EDIT: I would add that I've only read Neil Armstrong's post after I posted this. According to his statement I should fall in the 99% category (I'm not a 100Gb downloader) but I'm leaving because of the appalling service we (the 99%) are receiving!

Am I one of the 1%?

It's easy to read these forums or ADSLguide and think we're losing customers at a frightening rate, but it simply isn't the case. The % of customers leaving us each month hasn't increased in 6 months and is well below the industry average.

But still that means that the amount of people leaving has increased ;-)

Having said that I suppose it's only normal for you to increase the amount of customers leaving if the customer base has increased so dramatically.

I suppose the actual figures are commercially sensitive information and as such you can't tell us?

Even so as marketing manager I'd like to give you a challenge, it probably is unrealistic but there's no harm in aiming too high ;-)

For each 1% increase the the customer base reduce the amount of the customers leaving each month by 1% - I said it's a challenge! ;-)

The only way you can do the above is by keeping all your customers happy!

Hmmm... if you try to download the odd DVD (to use yesterdays, backward looking technology, with HDTV all but here in Europe) then from UseNet you really will be able to only download the odd THREE DVDs in as month before PlusNet says you've downloaded too many odd DVDs.

Am I one of the 1%?

Yeah, the Odd DVD... Odd means not even, which is either 1 or 3 at the lowest end of the spectrum. at one it could be 9GB, at 3 it could be 27GB... so what's it to be?

Either way this limit is completely unaccepable.

Try downloading Lost SE 2 Ep 06 whilst capped... Theoretically of course... For the sake of an example, there *could* be 5060 Seeds and 16694 Leechers and, theoretically, speeds would only be 15kb/s max.

Am I one of the 1%?

Anyone who consistently downloads huge amounts (e.g. 100GB per month or more) all day long is not sustainable at the prices we charge, and would be better off finding another ISP.

I'm trying to do just that Neil - go off and find another ISP. But have been told that I will have to pay up the remainder of the years bill - I could theoretically make it my business to download as much as possible over the next month and then have the remainder of my contract waived.

I wouldn't really care what it is I would download, as long as it would exceed the SUP.

With this in mind, isn't it easier to just let me have my MAC key as requested.on my ticket and let me go - I'm sure the majority of the users on here would prefer that than have me downloading 24/7?